


Viva

by aimmyarrowshigh



Category: Union J (Band), X Factor (UK) RPF
Genre: F/M, Las Vegas, Past Relationship(s), The X Factor Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 19:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And this cherub-demon smiles at her, full of teeth and nervousness and cheekbones, and Caroline’s heart flutters in her chest a bit as she thinks, well. Christ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Viva

**Author's Note:**

> **Character/Relationships** : George Shelley/Caroline Flack, past!Caroline Flack/Harry Styles  
>  **Warnings** : Misogyny, language, crude sexual language/mentions.  
>  **Disclaimer** : We don't own anything. No claim of knowledge or veracity is made towards anyone in the story and no aspersions or claims of character are to be inferred. We have no connection nor permissions from One Direction, X-Factor, Simon Cowell, SyCo Inc., Sony, ITV, or Blair Dreelan/Alpha Dog Management. No libel intended.

** Viva **

“Oh, Christ,” Caroline whispers into her hands as she watches the next act approach the stage, his walk half swagger and half doe-footed shyness. He’s all slim waist and narrow hips and long, long fingers and soft feathery hair and _déjà vu_. This -- _creature_ , this boy-thing, turns his head like he’s heard her and his eyes… at least they’re different, big and brown and utterly guileless.

Or, well. She’d thought that once about _someone_ ’s green eyes, too.

And this cherub-demon smiles at her, full of teeth and nervousness and cheekbones, and Caroline’s heart flutters in her chest a bit as she thinks, _well. Christ._

It’s not that Caroline doesn’t still get on with Harry – to be honest, on occasion when they’re pissed and Nick’s already gone to bed like the old fogie he is and Lou’s left and they’re the only two still sitting around Nick’s absurd glass deco coffee table with their wine, she still gets off with Harry, too, panties pushed to the side and cock pulled out through Harry’s fly but Caroline’s top pushed down so he can suck on her tits because they both love it – but it’s not the same as it was when they could still pretend to be a secret that they might be able to keep. Harry is what changed. His second scandal, but his first time dragging someone through the mud along behind him, and he’s harder now. Withered. 

His eyes aren’t guileless anymore, and maybe that makes some small part of Caroline out to be all of the horrible names she’s called, but she misses that. The sense of vague teenage invincibility.

She has time to watch enough of the boy onstage to hear that his name is George, doesn’t catch the last name, and that he’s eighteen ( _well, dammit; Christ_ ). She expects him to sing “Grenade” like all of the other cute white boys, or “Payphone” or something by Jason Mraz maybe with his guitar if he fancies himself a Real Artist. Instead the corner of his lip quirks and he says he’s going to sing “Toxic” by Britney Spears and Caroline knows that game.

This little boy-thing is hell in a handbasket all on his own, and Caroline wonders whether _he_ really gets it yet. What getting up on that stage with that face and those hands and that voice will do to him.

In two years, he’ll be withered, too.

Caroline thinks that’s probably sad.

• • •

She’s mostly forgotten him by Boot Camp, because there are so fucking many teenage white boys filtering through the Echo Arena who give her long looks beneath their eyelashes. Some seem shy and awed. She catches others shouldering their mates and jeering at her when they think she can’t see, _cougar_ and _slag_ and _I’m fitter than Harry Styles, yeah, think I could get a go if I’m put through?_

She’d also forgotten what a cesspool Boot Camp really is. Everyone wants to prove they’re The Star, they have The X-Factor, they have the biggest cock or the tightest arse or the loosest arse or the most ripped abs or the highest tolerance for alcohol when really, ninety-nine percent of them are no-talent camera fillers without a shred of memorability or sparkle or – common fucking sense. If you can’t sing and you’re up all hours sucking cock and screaming, you can’t well expect to make it to the next stages. Everyone at Boot Camp is a gossip. Everyone at Boot Camp is a slag. And everyone at Boot Camp is a competitor willing to say anything for a minute in the spotlight and an edge over their closest match.

She and Dermot are put up in the same hotel as the contestants even though the judges don’t have to deal with this shit. People keep knocking at Caroline’s door in the night and once, she can see someone wanking (rather loudly) just outside her peephole.

“Oi!” she calls through the door. “Tiny Pecker, get out of here before I see your face or I’ll ring security and 999!”

Whoever it is scurries off, but she can hear cheers and a very garbled chorus of “What Makes You Beautiful.”

Caroline flops back into her bed and puts the pillows over her head. “Fuck this shit.”

The next morning, it’s immediately evident who spent the night living like popstars and who spent the night preparing to become a popstar. Rylan Clark looks absolutely rough (well, for Rylan Clark) and most of the greasy-haired teenage louts are a bit green and gray. There’s a knot at the breakfast buffet table of young kids who actually look almost respectable, and Caroline notices without surprise that Ella Henderson is there with Triple J, and there’s – there’s George, she thinks his name is ( _knows it is and doesn’t want to admit to herself she remembers_ ), grinning brightly at something Ella’s said as his long, thin fingertips twirl a stirrer absently in his paper cup of coffee.

Over the rest of the day, it slowly filters into the crew’s awareness that he’s come to be called, almost universally, ‘Gorgeous George.’

• • •

When he’s eliminated in the very final cut, Caroline sees George huddled up in the corner alone, arms held tight around his knees and face down in the basket of his arms. There are a lot more dramatic criers in the Boys category than she would have expected, and the cameras have to tend to them first, but comfort is really Dermot’s area. Caroline is more along for jokes and a bit of slapstick fun.

But Dermot’s supporting the weight of about five sobbing grown men with another ten waiting in line for a last shot at being televised. Even crying, maybe someone will think they have that special something yet. 

So Caroline kneels down next to Gorgeous George and rubs her hand over his back. The pad of her thumb rolls a circle over the nape of his neck and she’s a bit surprised she’s let herself, because that’s – that’s kind of a _move_.

“Hey,” she whispers. “You have it.”

“Apparently not.” George lifts his head and he’s a _vision_ of beautiful Wounded Boy: cheeks flushed bright pink, the tip of his nose red, eyes big and sad and soft. 

Caroline wrinkles one side of her nose. “Things will work out. That’s the magic of media, Gorgeous George.”

George bites lips between his teeth; Caroline cringes a little inside that she’d let it slip out. It’s catchy, that’s all. Catchy like a common cold.

His teeth drag at the pink of his lip as he considers his words before speaking. “Isn’t the ‘magic of media’ all down to spin?”

Caroline smiles and rubs his shoulder again. She tucks her face just a bit closer so no one else can read her lips before she reassures him again, “And there – you have it.”

“Thanks.” George gives her a watery smile and his cheeks dimple and his cheekbones -- _christ_. 

Caroline stands up again and offers him her hand. George swallows and takes it to let her help him up. 

She knows these hands. Fingers longer than should be allowed, all thin and pretty and steady; over-confident teenage boy hands that haven’t gone over rough man-hands yet, with their knuckles still slim. George’s fingertips are callused, though, from the guitar he’s been toting around in a butter-brown case, and that’s – at least a reminder of someone different.

“Chin up, George,” Caroline says. She squeezes his hand once before letting go. “That’s all you can do. Keep your chin up. Plant your feet.”

George’s eyes are still shiny, but he’s not crying anymore as he stares at her with disconcerting earnestness, and that – that’s _déjà vu_ again, that ‘stare like you’re the only person in the room’ trick; she knows that trick. But the pout of George’s mouth is so soft, with not a smirk on it. 

Caroline blinks just to break his stare and says, “Plant your feet, Georgie. Mark my words you have it, and for you… boys like you ride spin like a roller coaster.” She’s the one to smirk this time. She has to be the first to put that smile on. “Gorgeous George.”

• • •

When Rough Copy have to pull out of the competition, Caroline is the one to suggest to Louis, _bring back Triple J – but put that little… that kid George in with them_. After they’ve all accepted the invitation, Caroline is filmed phoning them with fake invites to get fake reactions, just in case they decide to run Xtra Factor that way.

When she rings George, all she says is, “Plant your feet.”

• • •

They think, of course, that it’d be absolutely a riot to give Caroline a marriage skit in Las Vegas. Spinster Caroline settles for Louis Walsh with hair-plugs, Cougar Caroline becomes a gold-digging grave robber, Slaggy Caroline settles down to a sexless marriage with a gentle national joke.

Hilarious. They have to film fifty-four takes and forty-one times, she has to kiss Louis Walsh. Eight times, Sharon Osbourne actually pulls her hair rather hard, and somehow Caroline can’t think it’s an accident though she’s not sure what she’s ever done to the woman. The crew asks if she’d like to come for a drink and maybe find a cheap, fun magic show or striptease or something for the night, but Caroline just shakes her head.

“No, thanks all the same, lads, we’ve a long day tomorrow and I think I’m a bit jet-lagged.” She smiles and gives them a little wave as she ducks into the hotel again. They’re filming at the Rio Hotel but staying at the Gold Coast Casino further away from the Strip – they’d been able to get a cheap group deal, all four girls in the groups rooming together and the boys split fairly evenly. Caroline has her own on the same floor. Dermot paid for his own stay at the Rio, like Louis and Sharon, but Caroline doesn’t see much difference. She isn’t there for spectacle.

As soon as she ducks into the hotel, she slips off her super-high platform shoes and lets them dangle from one finger as she pads into the elevator and up to her room. Her hair’s a mess from yanking out that stupid fucking veil, but she doesn’t much care. Everyone else on her floor is young and hot and in Las Vegas for the first and maybe last time – they’ll be off getting lapdances and betting 17 black and taking photos with fake Elvis and real Celine Dion. 

Or fake Celine Dion and real Elvis. Impossible to tell what’s the truth in Las Vegas.

Her room isn’t exactly – well, the suites at the Rio, but it’s nice enough. There’s a bed. There’s an ice bucket. There’s a hot shower. That’s more or less what Caroline expects out of a hotel.

(Once, to get away from all of the gossip, Harry had taken her to an absolutely dilapidated chateau in Courchevel. Snow had melted in the attic as soon as he’d lit the fire and they spent half the night under the kitchenette table to avoid icy-cold water dripping on their heads. Harry had ventured out to dash to the refrigerator for their food and the bottle of wine Caroline had just uncorked when the ceiling first started caving in and when he’d crawled back under the table again, he was laughing so brightly that the drips of cold water shimmered as they ran off the end of his nose. They’d hidden under the table in a hidden chateau in a hidden town and eaten French cheese and bread and drunk wine straight from the bottle, and Harry had felt big and broad and warm and safe as he’d moved over her, inside her, beneath that stupid rickety table in the cold room.

They were over not too soon after. Out of masochistic curiosity, Caroline had looked up that chateau a month later to see if it had been repaired, and instead the wrecking ball took it down. There were some storms no roof could weather.) 

It’s ungodly hot in Nevada. Caroline wishes, not for the first time, that hotel room windows could open more than three inches. Not that there’s any breeze outside – just dry desert air.

She opens the window anyway and the sound of the city wavers in. She knots her hair up on top of her head. Orders a bottle of white from room service and picks out her outfit for tomorrow’s filming while she waits for it to arrive. Takes the wine; buys a corkscrew on the show’s tab because Americans are good for nothing if not clever enterprise. Caroline realizes that there’s no ice in the bucket, and she doesn’t want to buy more, so she’ll have to go to the machine.

A dressing gown will do. She tucks the key card into her bra because, well, who cares when you’re alone, and tip-toes out into the corridor to find the ice machine.

And at the ice machine, wearing striped pyjama trousers, a gray t-shirt, and wide eyes, is Gorgeous George. He’s sucking his stupid top lip again and holding a crumpled fistful of American dollars.

“Hiya,” Caroline says. She lifts the bucket. “Ice.”

George nods. “Orange soda. But I can’t get the machine to take my money.”

“Did you put in the right one?” Caroline asks. She sets her ice bucket down on the machine and leans over to sort through the bills in George’s hand, and it doesn’t actually occur to her until much later that her dressing gown gapes completely open. “I think you need a five. Fellow with the beard’s on it.”

“Oh.” George licks his lip and it plumps up red and pretty. “Thanks, Caroline.”

She smiles at him and tilts her head. “Why are you here? Why aren’t you out trying to find out if you’re snogging the real Ke$ha or not in some seedy casino up the strip?”

“I’m underage here,” George says glumly. “They’ve all left me behind. I’m watching some television program with a very blond man yelling about diners, drive-ins, and dive restaurants. It’s been on for hours.”

“That sounds really unpleasant,” Caroline laughs. “Your band have left you too?”

George shrugs. “It’s alright. They had each other first.” George smiles, and Caroline can’t help thinking that it’s just as nice a look on his face as George crying. “And you, Ms. Flack? Why aren’t you betting the deed on Dermot’s house at some blackjack table? Or seeing a George Michael tribute act, at least?”

Caroline smiles wryly. “I think I’ve heard enough bad covers of ‘Faith’ this summer to last me the rest of my life.” She pauses and considers George, considers his odds. She tucks his money back into his hand and says, without looking at him, “Shame to spend your big night in Las Vegas alone with your television. Come back to mine. Have a glass with me. If you bore me then you can tell me the channel number for your blond man with his restaurants on your way out.”

“Alright,” George says, even as his face goes a little pink. The dollar bills crumple in his hand and he stuffs them haphazardly into his pocket. “I – okay. Is… it because I, erm, look like – ”

“No,” Caroline says firmly. “And you don’t. Not really.” She inhales a long breath through her nose and blows it out through her mouth like she’s trying to blow smoke rings. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” George says. He nods and his eyes light up as he smiles, nose wrinkling in a little twitch that’s almost too cute to be allowed on someone Caroline’s about to fuck in a motel in Vegas. “Lead the way.”

Caroline has to stand on tiptoe to fill the ice bucket and she might, just might, maybe, make a display of posing her knee in piqué to show off her legs – like that’s new – and she knows George is looking, really looking, taking in the endless brown of her tan and wondering where it ends (it doesn’t). The back of the dressing gown rides up high on her thighs and there’s the slightest, most tentative brush of warm, guitar-callused fingertips on her skin just beneath the line of the hem before George pulls his hand away again like a startled bird.

Caroline smiles at him over her shoulder and plucks her key card out of her bra. “Come on.”

“Yes, ma’am,” George says, and Caroline isn’t really sure whether he’s being facetious or whether he -- _likes_ that or… whether he’s actually just that nervous. When she raises an eyebrow and examines his face, all cheekbones and bitten lip and big, guileless eyes, she thinks it’s a bit of all three.

[](http://statcounter.com/free-web-stats/)


End file.
